


Piecemeal Men

by JoCarthage



Category: I Frankenstein (2014), Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Gore, I know his name isn't Frankenstein but it is in the movie, I swear, It bothered me calling him that every time, It ended up way too serious, This was supposed to be a joke, but it was his chosen name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 20:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarthage/pseuds/JoCarthage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This fic was a dare, after I made friends come with me to see I, Frankenstein. They wanted to see how he would react to working with the Winchesters, and so, here this is. I am certain it was supposed to be crack, but I couldn't seem to get it to behave that way. This is both one of the lighter-weight and darker pieces I've posted here. Go figure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Piecemeal Men

The tough thing about being made of dead people, is when you sweat, you _stink_. Frankenstein was used to climes that kept him fresh as cut meat in a restaurant freezer. But the long plain between the Enid municipal airport and Crescent City, OK, each gravelly step brought with it shallow regret.

_“It will only take a few weeks and they don’t need me until the summer, when the dead rise at the Solstice.”_

_Wade’s mouth was flat and her eyes narrow. Still, she tangled her fingers in his and set them on his knee._

_“You don’t know exactly no one in Crescent City, Oklahoma.”_

_The piecemeal man was quiet. The Gargoyles had squadrons in New York, in Chicago, even in the sand-filled hills of San Francisco. They had nothing where he was now called to travel._

_“And how did you even find out about this, you don’t even have email—wait, wait, wait.” Wade dove, breaking the thin contact of their hands, grasping for her mobile on the side table and yanking the cord out of the wall with it. Frankenstein curled the piece of tabloid news clipping into his palm. He deserved to keep some secrets._

_She began scrolling, her thumb digging flat on the screen. “Hah! I have it.”_

_Frankenstein watched the winter light down her bare shoulder, moving as she moved._

_“I knew I had it somewhere. A grad school friend of Carls,” here her voice slowed, but she continued, a little flatter, “He moved into husbandry, rehabilitated paralyzed livestock. He might be able to help.” Wade knew he’d slept rough most nights of his long life, but wanted more for him, if she could manage it._

_As Wade went about making the contact, Frankenstein continued to trace out his route on the map of the American state of Oklahoma. It would be a long walk from where he would land to where he might stay, deceased-Carl’s friend willing._

Frankenstein was thinking he might duck under a fence, lay away the hot day in the tall side-grass bordering the fields, when he heard the sound of a car begin to rush up behind him. His ears weren’t special-made—Herr Schubert hadn’t contributed to his manufacture—but he had learned the art of not being distracted when he went listening. The engine sounded old, the rumble reminding him of Europe-rare American muscle cars. The song was unfamiliar, though it was clearly American. No one else loved swooning guitar riffs like Yankees.

He glanced behind him when he expected to be able to see it over the plane, catching a glimpse of a blood-black paint-job. It was like an arrow-tip with a wide-wake of summer dust roiling behind. He turned his face forward and kept stomping his way on the side of the highway. He was starting to feel the rhythm of the song. It was lilting, like a shouted lullaby.

He started counting in his head, hoping to distract himself from the car’s presence for long enough for it to leave him in peace. But it was slowing, fat tires spraying gravel as it curved to a stop behind him.

“You ok, man?” He didn't turn to look at the caller, hoping to keep on, but the voice was open, little wariness coloring it.

He kept walking, and _fuck_ , there was the car door. Wide boots jogging up behind him. When the man came alongside him he could not longer pretend he couldn’t hear.

“You need help, man?” 

The American was bowl-legged even as he jogged, and was carrying at least four knives. Frankenstein placed his feet and waited until the man came around to see his face. He stared straight at him, waiting for the gasp-apology-turn-flee which was most people’s reactions to the scars from his maker’s hands.

This one leaned in a little closer, hand going to grasp the hilt of his largest knife. Frankenstein stayed still, hands ready to get him out of any human-made trouble, shoulders rolled forward.

The man’s eyes widened and he eased back, weight on his back-foot. His eyes flicked back to the man in his passenger seat, and Frankenstein heard the door open and the sound of a hammer being pulled back.

“What’re you doing in Oklahoma?” He asked harshly, and Frankenstein’s attention snapped back to the man in front of him, his face set and jaw tight.

“My business is my own.” He rumbled, shoulders shifting back, hands hanging inside of his coat, near his hidden daggers.

“You’re not from around here.”

“Excuse me.” Frankenstein started walking, giving the man the option to move or get moved. He stood his ground, hand out, and when his palm touched Frankenstein’s chest he stumbled back, not expecting the level of force he brought with him.

To the man’s credit, he came up with a silver-blade drawn and a shout: “Hold!”

Frankenstein wondered at that word choice, but when he heard steps running up from behind him he realized it had been directed to his partner with the car, who was now running behind him.

A bear-paw of a hand tried to yank him around by his shoulder, but he kept walking, dragging him before he was released. He kept his pace, listening to the whispered argument following behind him.

“What _is_ he, Dean?”

“God only knows Sam, but son of a bitch is strong.”

“Should be gank him?”

There was a pause and Frankenstein unsheathed his blade, blessed with the holy tri-cross. He didn’t sense anything demonic in these human boys, but a blade would kill a man as well as a hell-spawn. He kept his shoulders loose, but listened as they talked, following at a distance.

“He didn’t say where he was going, but he didn’t try to fight me.”

“We can’t just let him go.”

“Ok, Sammy, what do you propose we do?”

He heard jogging footsteps behind him and turned weapon out and body braced. This lanky bulk had a more open face, and he’d wisely holstered his sidearm. At the glint of the blade he threw up his hands, slowing his pace until he was twice each of their reach away.

“Wow, I don’t mean any trouble. My brother’s kind of an asshole, I’m sorry about him.” The smile was fake, but it was a well-intentioned fake. “Look, if you’re not here to cause trouble, why not take a few minutes to chat, then we’ll get off your case.”

The sun was unforgiving, but he paused.

“Fine.” Sam’s eyes widened when he spoke, but his shoulders eased down when Frankenstein sheathed his weapon.

“Fine.” The man walked towards him, hands still up, smiling.

“Where are you headed?” The man started, head-tilted, still pushing that easy smile. Frankenstein kept his face cold—the coolest thing about him, currently.

He jerked his head down the straight, empty road.

“Crescent City? That’s where we’re heading. There was a piece in the local paper, something about a preacher predicting the dead would rise on the 20th—“

“The 22nd. The solstice. Tomorrow.” Frankenstein ground out, hoping enough information would get these puppies out of his way.

“Is that why you’re going there? Are you,” He seemed to trip over his mouth for a moment and then rethought what he was about to say, “Do you know something about that?”

Frankenstein stared at him, refusing to give more. The kid waited, head cocked. Frankenstein couldn’t help noticing his brother was sidling up behind him, looking to reinforce the ranks. Their car was still rumbling.

The man turned his head the other way, then tried another tack.

“You’re not from around here. That dagger, that’s French?”

“German.” Frankenstein had to give him a nod for his eye, he hadn’t had much time to catch the side-scrolling and the difference between northern France and southern German smiths was limited for this small a weapon.

“Are you a hunter there?” Frankenstein thought he might be referring to more than the hunting of beasts of the forest that kept a man alive. Perhaps something more like his God-given charge to descend demon-kind to their fiery birth-homes.

“What do you know of…hunting?” Frankenstein asked. He knew nothing of humans involved in the hidden war between gargoyles and demons, but America was a strange place. The sheer number of places selling hamburgers—none of which involved the juicers of Hamburg—told him he wasn’t in Germany anymore.

At Frankenstein’s question, the man’s face became like water under an ice sheet. His was that of a soldier’s. His fingers curved into the shapes they would hold around a blade or a gun, his shoulder angled back to reduce his areas of vulnerability, his jaw tight.

“My brother and I,” he decided to say, “We are hunters. Raised to it, we fight demons and monsters and try to save people from having to know they exist.”

Frankenstein couldn’t help the widening of the corners of his eyes. Children raised to fight demons and, what other sorts of “monsters” could there be out in the world? America seemed barbaric, but this was brutality unexpected.

He shifted his shoulder back as well, mind unable to filter out the disgust the young man had held within his voice when he said “monsters.”

“What do you mean by ‘monsters’”?

A clear voice, the one of the first man, called out, advancing: “Vampires, werewolves, kanima and ghouls. Witches, warlocks, anything that draws on magic to hurt others.” His voice dropped and Frankenstein heard a hint of steel. “Maybe something like you.”

The bigger one flung his arm out, barring his brother’s path. “Dean. We don’t know what he is. Stand down.” The other settled his shoulders but kept his gaze firmly locked on Frankenstein’s.

“I am a monster.” Frankenstein said. He could hear Wade berating him in his head, _You’re only a monster if you behave like one_ , but he might be behaving like one in the near future if these men pressed their case, and he wanted to be truthful, if nothing else.

The dust was really starting to pick up, and it swirled in eddies around his ankles, trying to find a way into his boots. He’d made a close examination of the dirt on the asphalt connecting his feet to the earth below him in the first few hours of his walk. He reviewed his findings and once he was sure he could accept any expression on their faces, he let his gaze swing up to their faces to find—rueful amusement? It seemed honesty had relaxed their shoulders. Now they each knew where the other ones stood.

“You’re going to need to be a tad more specific. We’ve been called ‘monsters’ more than a few times, perhaps with more justification than you might imagine.” This was coming from the slouching smaller on, head cocked and hand in his worn-out pocket.

“Getting to the straight version of my brother’s line of inquiry: what are you?”

Frankenstein continued to answer: “I was made 200 years ago by a mad man in Europe. I was pieced together from corpses, but was given true life. I thought for centuries I was an empty vessel, but after fighting a Prince of Hell I discovered I have grown within myself a soul. I now hunt demons and ally with gargoyles.”

“Pop-quiz: how do you kill a demon?” The taller one threw out. Frankenstein made eye-contact and answered:

“With any blade inscribed with the holy tri-cross one can descend a demon, though I have never seen any bring the true death.”

“You haven’t tried exorcism?” This was the smaller one, eyes narrow. He reminded Frankenstein of one of Wade’s sassier grad students at her evening seminar.

“I am not a priest. I am also unsure of the state of my immortal soul; I am not always in good standing with God. An exorcism might be pushing my luck.”

“Join the club.” He muttered. Then the tall one broke in—“What are gargoyles?”

“You know of demons but not gargoyles?” It was Frankenstein’s turn to sound incredulous. “They are Hell’s primary enemy. They have wings, they sit and stare, stony-faced, they ascend to heaven when killed, they are unnaturally beautiful?”

“ _Angels_? You’re working with _angels?_ ” Everything in their bodies said this would be a bad question to answer affirmatively.

“Not angels; gargoyles.”

“Sam, he might mean the same thing, though ‘gargoyle’ isn’t a nice thing to call feathered-people—some of them can be pretty fugly, but it’s more the vessel’s fault when that happens.” He returned his gaze to Frankenstein, considering. “We’ve worked with them on occasion. They can be pretty useful, if you let them stretch their morals out a little bit.”

Frankenstein quirked his head and then shook it, resettling his feathers. “I work with the gargoyles to defeat and descend every living demon. But that is not my purpose today.”

Both men tipped their heads to the side and looked nothing like confused pups. They made Frankenstein feel old. Time to end this chatter.

“My purpose here is no concern of yours.” He began to turn, when the smaller one’s voice cut in:

“It kind of is,” the smaller one tried for a disarming smile, but only succeeded in baring his teeth, sauntering forwards. The tall one shouldered in front of him, hands open placatingly again.

“Look, we have a few simple tests. You can do any you want to confirm we’re not demons and we’ll do ours on you, and if we all pass, maybe we can help you in your purpose here. It may even be the same as ours.”

Frankenstein shook his head. These children were going to keep him through the dusk at this rate, but they were the ones who needed to replenish their bodies with water most frequently. If they could stand the heat, he could keep them uncomfortable.

“No demon can bear to be pricked by a holy tri-cross blade.” Both men rolled their sleeves up with a swiftness that betrayed a lack of self-preservation. He slowly withdrew his blade and stepped forward, ignoring how their noses crinkled at the smell that came with him when he moved. They could start leaving him alone at any time.

He sliced their forearms and aside from an involuntary twitch out of the way at the last moment, neither man reacted. He nodded and resheathed his blade. He yanked his own sleeve up over his elbow and presented his arm. Their process took longer.

First there was a cut with a silver-blend blade, one whose markings including something that looked suspiciously like a tri-cross, though it was mixed with a wide range of other swirling shapes. Then a splash of water—at his querying look the tall one said “holy water”—and finally a muttered “Christo.” Having passed, arm stinging and wet in the dying dry heat of the day, he folded his sleeve back down his arm.

They all three stood silent for a long moment. The taller one cleared his through and said: 

“Look, we’ll let you go if that’s what you want, but we’ve got some experience in killing demons and keeping the dead from walking, when that’s what needs doing. Why don’t you catch a ride from us and we’ll help out?”

Frankenstein thought of his uncomfortable feet and tightening deadline. He thought of betting home to Wade faster and easier. He thought of the stench of the crypt, and the way it was easier to fight with Wade beside him. The monster nodded.

“In that case, I’m Sam, and this is my brother, Dean.”

“I am Frankenstein.”

They shook, each wincing at the minced-leather-texture of his hands, but gripping nonetheless.

Their car had deep seats in the back that left his knees elevated to somewhere in the vicinity of his nipples. They rode in silence, only the crackle of the radio between the three of them.

—

They made it to the Carl’s friend’s house just as the sun was setting. Frankenstein went to the front door to knock the brothers trailed behind him. He dodged a thin woman pushing a stroller with a sleeping child and bore the smile of a neighbor in a paint-covered workshirt. The street itself was quiet but for the whisking of the wind, and the streetlights were bright. 

But something was off, and his knock jerked the door back on its hinges. He rushed inside, the stench of hours-spilled-blood roiling around him as he searched the house for the source.

He found it in the kitchen, door propped open by the first half of the doctor’s body. He could only identify him by the shock of blond hair stuck in the congealing blood on the linoleum floor that matched the picture Wade had printed for him from the internet. His body lacked skin, and pretty much every organ easily accessible from his abdominal cavity. 

Frankenstein had seen deer gutted like this when the wolf-packs ran hungry in the last weeks of deep winter. This was a work a butchery, or desperation. He heard the men behind him bring up a commotion, but continued to walk, following the clearly-marked footsteps. There was so much blood-spatter along the path, he could only imagine the hungry-eater had carried an armful of organs and snacked on them as he walked. He reached a fence where the tracks stopped, and began to look for an easy path to hop over. 

He was throwing the connecting gate open when he heard a shout. He turned his head and saw the brothers, both with guns drawn, both with eyes scanning. He could see the hunters in them now, standing strong and cold. The shorter one sprinted to him.

“Did you see where it went?”

“There’s a blood trail over this fence.”

“Sammy, get over here.” And he went first through the gate. Frankenstein followed quickly, seeing the gore trail and following it with swift feet. He heard Sammy behind him, following swiftly.

He thought it might be a long trail, but it was not. In the shade of the next house, they found it, hunched over its arms, eating intestines like grotesquely-undercooked sausages. The stood together, watching it, though it had yet to notice them.

Sam was out of breath, but asked thinly: “Did you know this could happen?”

“I did not.”

Dean’s cold eyes did not believe him.

They dispatched the monster, finally finding that it give in when pricked with the holy tri-cross blade. They walked back to the car, and drove until they found the only motel in town. Called the Camelot, it had a dozen empty rooms and a owner who was only too grateful to let two for the night.

—

Inside the hotel room—a suite, 2 doubles for the brothers and a queen in another room for Frankenstein—they set up computers and got to work. Frankenstein painstakingly pawed-in Wade’s number, but let it ring out to voicemail. She must have been in class.

He rejoined the brothers, just as Sam was saying:

“Get this—this town-history site is saying there’s a legend that the longtime mayor made a devil’s bargain. It says ‘At the height of the terror around the uranium processing plant's affect on the groundwater, Mayor O’Conner met a dark man at the crossroads where he’d buried a lover’s locket. There he sold him his soul in exchange for no untimely deaths in the town.” It goes on ‘Since that time, those born in the town have only died from old age.’

“That might be the most selfless devil’s deal I’ve ever heard of,” Dean commented, but Sam held his hand up:

“It goes on: ‘the only restriction on the mayor’s power was that he could never use it to help someone of his own blood. If he ever violated the bargain, all the dead who were saved from untimely deaths would rise one the following summer solstice.’ And look here,” Sam flipped to another open tab, with the headline:

> # MAYOR’S GRANDBABY MAKES MIRACULOUS RECOVERY
> 
> # Town overjoyed, parade planned

Dean whistled and leaned back in his chair, hands folding behind his head.

“Does it say anything about the name of the devil, we could call Crowley,”

“No, nothing.”

The brothers were silent, but Frankenstein knew what he would do. He would not allow the dead to eat any more of the people in this town, and if that early-riser was any indication, it would take his holy tri-cross blades to stop them.

The brothers seemed to be on the same path as him:

“We’ll have to fight them off if they rise. Town this small, there’s got to be only one graveyard. And if it only covers people born in the city limits, we’re looking at a few hundred dead.”

Sam nodded, and got started finding the boneyard. Frankenstein stood, planning to call Wade once more and then settle in for pre-battle sleep.

—

They spent the following day interviewing the longtime mayor, who broke down and told them he’d violated the terms of his deal to protect his grandbaby. They could find no way around it, though the brothers spent a hurried afternoon researching every spell the lay the dead to rest they could.

Frankenstein spent the afternoon sharpening his weapons and carving tri-crosses into the hilts of every knife Sam and Dean owned.

—

When dusk began to fall, their plan to arrive early at the cemetery to lock its gates to limit the area the dead could affect fell apart when another early riser came at them. The motel-owner had buried her husband in the back yard, and his zombie-corpse was halfway through a pair of hikers when Sam and Dean traced the screams and pulled him away. Their knives did their work, but time to preempt the zombies had passed and all three raced to the boneyard, panic-sweat singeing the interior of the car.

They were vaulting gravestones on the way to the back gate when the ground began to churn, bodies rising to the top, skeleton-claws seeking the warmth of their tendons. Sam took the lead, guiding them to hide on the top of a mausoleum.

From the top, they saw every blade of grass turned under as the shifting soil made way for newly animate bodies. Those bodies were pulling themselves up out of the ground, moonlight grazing their cavernous faces and grasping hands.

To a monster, as soon as they were free enough to split their attention between excavating themselves, they turned to face the remaining gate and began their shambling progress.

Frankenstien’s mind was marathoning own two totally serrate circuits. One was focused on the need to re-lay these men, women, and God in Heaven, _children._ His eyes darted, confirming they would be trapped within the gated walls once they closed that last opening. He settled his shoulders, and prepared himself to jump down into the teaming fray.

The other track focused on the similarities between himself and these walking dead. Their gaits were so awkward and stumbling, their minds solely driven by a need and interest in blood. They didn't have his mind or his soul, but he could feel a fraternal pity for their existence within stinking corpses.

That pity did not stop him from grinding his first blade into the spine of the lopsided woman he landed on as he jumped off the room of the mausoleum. At each touch of the a blade marked by the holy tri-cross, the like-life of a zombie flared up and out, extinguishing any movement they’d stolen. But there were _so many_. Frankenstein worked methodically, stabbing and slashing, as the men quickly etched tri-crosses onto their weapons and bullets.

He fought furiously, giving himself back to the fury of his century alone in the wilderness, when he fought wolves for his sustenance. He used the same move a dozen times, then switched to an over-hand-slash, a dozen of those and then a reverse-attack. It was starting to feel mechanical when he tripped and half-fell into a grave.

Zombies followed him, their weakly grasping hands clutching his clothes, and their scent suddenly suffocating. He pushed against them, but could feel the weight of their bones. Then he heard a clicking, a sound that shot a jolt of adrenaline to his tailbone. One of the most skeletal ones was _biting_ at his face, and he ducked his head into its fetid chest to protect his face. It latched onto the collar of his leather jacket and he grunted as he tried to dislodge it. He heard the same disturbing snapping sound coming from his feet, where the undead were swarming him.

Then there was a tugging and more lightness, and he saw Sam Winchester heaving bodies made light by desiccation into a pile, where Dean stabbed each one in the throat, the location most likely to cause instant death without dulling the blade. Sam threw the half-dozen bodies that had piled onto Frankenstein into the pile and then offered him a hand up. He took it, hand drifting up to the clear tooth-impressions on his collar.

“They bite.” He said, then turned his back on the brothers. He began working his way to the exit gate again, taking more carefully survey of where his feet went. The zombies were slow-moving, but several were heading directly to the gate and the sleeping houses beyond it. Frankenstein put in a burst of speed and made it to the gate. He moved outside and began scraping it closed, metal making a terrible moaning sound on the ground. The ratcheting scrape made his teeth ache, but when he threw the snap-lock he felt a ooze of tension move out of his back. The problem was closer to contained.

He turned his eyes back and saw a clearing around the boys, zombies moving in without a lot of direction, attracted by the sound, but disorganized in the face of their unfazed violence. There were hundreds remaining, but now it was just a matter of stamina; he could let his rage reign and pick his humanity back up in the morning.

—

Dawn came, even as it always had after his darkest nights, and found a graveyard in disarray. Hundreds of bodies strewn away from their graves, the makings of a gristly month’s work for the caretakers. But no biters had escaped, and the mayor had worked with the sheriff to run continuous sweeps of the town, picking off the occasionally-illegally-buried dead with bullets marked by the holy tri-cross.

Frankenstein and the brothers were covered in gore, and gratefully accepted a hosing-down from the motel owner’s daughter before retiring to hot showers and hotter coffee. They drove out quickly after getting clean, because no matter the help they provided, they would still be the men who’d come to town when the zombies rose, and those weren’t the kind of people the mayor wanted around.

The brothers offered and Frankenstein accepted a ride to the municipal airfield, from which he would catch his first of four connecting flights back to Wade. He caught her near her phone as they drove, and the softness in his voice as he spoke to her changed his shape in the minds of the brothers.

They pulled up to the lonely terminal, the only building in kilometers surrounded by waving wheat, and he removed himself from the car. The men stayed sitting, but Sammy rolled down his window.

“We don’t often get out your way, but give us a heads up if you’ll be in town. Any one of these numbers should work,” and he handed Frankenstein a stack of paper.

“Fly safe,” Dean said before turning his gaze to the road. Sam gave a little wave and then they pulled away.

Frankenstein looked at the paper in his hands and flipped through. He saw the seals of half-a-dozen government departments and agencies, and even more aliases. His mouth twisted and he made his way into the terminal, content to wait in the air conditioning until his flight arrived.


End file.
